21 month check up

Thursday, May 31, 2007
21 month check up
So this is Bailey's last check up as a 'Baby'. After this, she is all grown up. That was fast wasn't it? She had this check up so they could monitor her weight closely since her diet is so limited and to check on her feeding progress, head, and catch up on immunizations. She only had one shot, her last hib. We will start both hep A and B next time and after all her hep B's are done, she is finally caught up. It feels good to finally see the light at the end of that long tunnel! She weighed in at 28 pounds, 3 ounces. Kind of freaks me out a little that she is so large but her ped thinks she is growing right on her curve (just above the 75th %) so hopefully she will thin out eventually. I worry that her Nutren Jr. is too fattening for her. So I hope once she is weaned from it, it will help her loose all that 'baby' fat. She still wants about 24 ounces a day of it even when she eats some solids. Her ped said some babies really enjoy drinking their milk and want that much despite solid intake. For example, yesterday she had about 8 ounces of solids and still had her usual 24 ounces of milk.

She had her 2nd feeding therapy with the new therapist here at home. She did sooo good! Her CDSA was here with us to talk about how things were going now and make sure the new therapist was what Bailey really needs. Even she was very impressed with how far Bailey has come over the past 2 weeks. The therapist was able to get Bailey to eat almost a whole cup of yogurt (what didn't fall off the spoon into her lap) and she even talked her into using a spoon most of the time. She warms right up to Ann (the new therapist) after just a few minutes. Some things for us to work on before next week are adding thick it to her yogurt (she needs it thin right now) and other thin foods/liquids, exposing her to graham crackers soaked in formula or milk, encouraging more use of spoons with preferred foods. We are going to first work on her texture aversions. She thinks I need to reduce the use of straws but that is how I get a bulk of fluids into Bailey. So I might have to argue with her on that one. Overall I am simply amazed with the difference the past two therapy sessions have made. If this progress continues, Bailey may be eating solids consistently by her 2yo birthday.

She has really taken off with her speech lately. She will still need an evaluation in July to make sure she is catching up well enough, esp due to our history (every one of us has had speech). She is still trying to link two words together and most often that ends up with some babble with bye bye mixed in somewhere. I was told she needed to have about 50 words and have 1/2 of that understandable by a stranger. She is nowhere near that now but she has 3 long months to work on getting there.

She has so many teeth coming in, it's hard to tell what number we are on right now. She has 2 good molars in on the bottom. Now the two top laterals are coming through nicely. The bottom left lateral is still MIA and if it doesn't come through soon, we may need to call her dentist. I can't see any evidence of one there yet. It may be a slacker so I'll give it a few more weeks. Her top 2 molars are just poking through also. Whew, I think that is it! So she has 7 teeth (5 in front, 2 in back) through good enough to be useful, and 4 more on the way.